Soap bars have long been employed for washing the human body and for "doing laundry". Before the advent of washing machines dictated the employment of detersive materials in powder, disintegrable briquette or liquid forms, laundry was washed with "laundry soap" bars made from suitable soaps of higher fatty acids, such as sodium soaps of mixed tallow and rosin fatty acids. Such laundry soap bars were especially suitable for being rubbed onto badly stained or soiled portions of fabrics being laundered, as on a washboard, to deposit a high concentration of the soap on the soiled area, and they provided mechanical means for applying energy to such surfaces to assist in removing the stains and soils.
Despite the fact that after the introduction of synthetic organic detergents and washing machines the amount of soap employed for laundry use diminished greatly, soap in bar or cake form is still the personal cleaning agent of choice in most of the world, the laundry soaps and detergents in bar form are also still preferred by many consumers in various regions. Detergent laundry bars based on alkylbenzene sulfonate detergents have been successfully marketed. They have been characterized as the equivalents in washing abilities of powdered laundry detergents based on similar alkylbenzene sulfonates, and are considered by many consumers to be more convenient to use. To use them does not require the purchase of a washing machine and, as was previously indicated, the bar form of the product allows it to be used in such manner that a comparatively high concentration of detersive material may be readily applied to a heavily stained or soiled area with accompanying physical force or energy, as on a washboard, so as more readily to loosen and remove such soil or stain.
A search of the prior art has resulted in the finding of the various patents and publications which, while they refer to detergent laundry bars and bar products containing higher fatty alcohol sulfate do not make the present invention obvious to one skilled in the art.
A method of aleviating the tendency of laundry bars to crack is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,543,204. U.S. Pat. No. 4,705,644 discloses detergent laundry bars with improved mildness that contain sodium alpha sulfo higher fatty acid methyl ester as one of the components U.S. Pat. No. 4,263,177 discloses amine oxide foam stabilizers for alkyl benzene sulfonate foaming agents. U.S. Pat. No. 3,223,647 discloses mild detergent compositions that contain alkyl benzene sulfonates and tertiary amine oxides. U.S. Pat. No. 4,828,752 discloses a toilet bar containing a synthetic polymeric thickner to impart improved processablity to the soap. U.S. Pat. No. 4,198,311 discloses a skin conditioning toilet bar that contains an alkali metal salt of an acyl lactylate or glycalate.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,543,204 discloses a detergent laundry bar that contains higher alchohol fatty sulfate and a higher fatty acid alkanol amide to avoid the breakage problems often associated with laundry bars containing higher alcohol sulfate.
None of the references alone or in combination discloses or makes obvious in combination sodium coco alkyl sulfate, sodium higher fatty acid sulfonates, cocoamido propylamine oxide, sodium tripolyphosphate, sodium carbonate, sodium silicate, calcium carbonate, talc and water in the detergent bar.